The present invention relates generally to a multi-function control apparatus, and more particularly to a multi-function control apparatus for controlling or manipulating a variety of electric/electronic devices for home use, such as, for example, television receivers, video tape recorders, air conditioners, audio systems, and the like.
In keeping with highly enhanced or sophisticated performance and functions of various electric/electronic apparatuses or machines for home use, the functions required for the control apparatus designed for control or manipulation are significantly increased in both the number and the type of functions. Further, there exists a consistent demand for miniaturization in the remote control apparatus among others. For coping with the increase in the number of functions as well as the demand for miniaturization, there are proposed a method of increasing the number of manipulating buttons provided in the control apparatus in accordance with the number of the functions as required and a method according to which the manipulating buttons are adapted to be used in common to a variety of the electric/electronic apparatuses for home use by changing over control signal codes by means of a change-over switch in accordance with the types of the home-use apparatus to be controlled. However, in the case of the first mentioned method, a problem is encountered in that the size of the remote control apparatus is necessarily increased in correspondence with the increase in the number of the manipulating buttons or manipulatability of the remote control apparatus is degraded when the size of the individual manipulating buttons is reduced in an attempt to increase the number of the buttons provided for a given space. On the other hand, the second mentioned method suffers from a problem that because of multiplex functions imparted to each of the manipulating buttons, the single manipulating button is required to have a plurality of display information, involving complication in the display of the function identifiers or names. As a prior art technique for solving the above problems, there may be mentioned the use of a liquid crystal touch panel device, which is however accompanied with intolerably high expenditure. Parenthetically, as typical examples of the prior art techniques mentioned above, remote control transmitters manufactured by Sharp Corporation of Japan are disclosed in JP-A-61-224020 or in the Japanese magazine "Television Gijutsu (Technology)", December 1988, p. 40 (published by Electronic Technology Publication Company of Japan).
In the case of the hitherto known techniques mentioned above, no consideration is paid to the degradation in the manipulatability of the remote control apparatus which is brought about by increasing the number of the manipulating buttons in an effort to comply with sophistication of the functions of the remote control apparatus. This problem will become more serious since it is expected that the number of the manipulating buttons will further be increased as the functions are more and more enhanced in the future.